Trump Is Putting Workers At Risk To Appease Powerful Donor

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Meatpacking facilities are ideal environments for spreading COVID-19. Cramped facilities make social distancing virtually impossible, and the “pace and physical demands of processing work made adherence to face-covering recommendations difficult.” A poorly-paid workforce is “incentivized to work while ill as a result of medical leave and disability policies and attendance bonuses that could encourage working while experiencing symptoms.” And rampant consolidation means that many slaughterhouses have hundreds or thousands of employees under one roof.
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Of the top 25 coronavirus clusters in the United States, six are slaughterhouses. (Most of the rest are jails and prisons.) A CDC survey released May 1 found that, across the country, there were 4,913 cases of COVID-19 at meat and poultry processing facilities, which have resulted in at least 20 deaths. These figures understate the scope of the problem since four states did not provide any data to the CDC, testing is not comprehensive, and some processing companies are reticent to report illnesses to state authorities. Multiple plants have closed, suggesting a serious outbreak, without disclosing the number of positive cases.
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In response to the outbreak, Trump has not mandated new protocols in meatpacking facilities to protect workers and the broader community. Instead, he’s done the opposite. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to designate “processors of beef, pork, and poultry” as “critical infrastructure during the national emergency.”
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Why is Trump doing this? Follow the money.
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This is a good article, it describes the conditions in which workers in meat packing facilities are working and the way in which the current US government has facilitated this, essentially allowing companies to capitalise on the increased demand for meat during the pandemic at the expense of their workforce. Part of the reason the Trump administration has been so eager to do this seems to be due to a powerful donor in the meat industry, which the article goes into detail on. It’s well worth reading.

It’s worth keeping in mind that this comes at a time when numerous other US workers involved in “essential industries” are striking due to a lack of adequate PPE or safe working conditions during the coronavirus. Across the country the working class seems to be suffering the most, and this will only continue as the government pushes to essentially pretend that the virus is not an issue. Here’s a link:

 
Have you read the Compendium or any Catholic social teaching?
 
Then don’t be so blithe about people quitting their jobs. Just because you and everyone you know is in a position to do so doesn’t mean everyone is, and meat-packing plants don’t pay very well.
 
I asked whether you’ve read it because going back to Rerum Novarum it speaks of the state stepping in to settle strikes. If you want to read how far state action can go in that regard check out Quadragesimo Anno.

In addition, St John Paul II spoke of worker owned industries and socialization in Laborem Exercens. Catholic teaching has never held the right to private property to be absolute. It is always subordinate to the common good.
 
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I’m not entirely convinced this is the reason Trump is putting workers at risk.

My own opinion is that Trump is doing the best he can, but he is in way over his head. He is impulsive and impetuous, and refuses to admit mistakes.

Wrong guy for the wrong job and the dreadfully wrong time.
 
So should he just let the food processing plants shut down?

How long do you think it would take with no meat at the grocery stores before civil unrest starts?

This is simply another “Orange Man Bad” story
 
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Pretty late to reply, but some of the responses here bug me
So should he just let the food processing plants shut down?..This is simply another “Orange Man Bad” story
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No, but there is more going on in that article then just “Trump keeps factory open.” Honestly I think there’s an important story there behind the part about Trump - unfortunately if it wasn’t there nobody would have read the article.

The meat packing industry, in a time of national crisis, is experiencing massive demand for their produce. This means high profits, little risk, and they’re doing this off the back of a highly exploited demographic of migrant workers who basically have no other options, while being put at major risk from the coronavirus. The fact that Trump is clearly in bed with a big figure in the meat packing industry, financially speaking, is notable but seems almost secondary to the really alarming part of the story. I think we would see similar abuses under any president, and definitely similar corporate backing exists for Joe Biden.

The meat industry must be making a killing. They’re experiencing a massive demand for their product, and are overworking a badly paid workforce that has little in the way of benefits or access to any kind of sick time or holiday in order to profit off this even more extensively. The fact that the government has helped them in this is obviously notable, but on its own it seems bad enough.
 
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Agreed. I don’t know anything about this Cameron’s facilities, but most meat producing facilities are already about as anti-microbial as a place can be made. One of the problems with meat packing facilities nowadays is that big business has manipulated the importation of foreign labor to keep wages down. Some of that has been lax enforcement of illegals. Some has been through NGO sponsorship of “refugee” groups. Some of those groups live in tight groups isolated from the rest of society. I have known some who live ten or more in a small house to save rent money.

If I had my way, they would be sent home, wages would be raised to the levels they were once at, and the government would enforce the borders and end the relationship with the NGOs. I’m Catholic myself, but some of the worst NGO offenders are Catholic dioceses or other “social justice” organizations who take government money to “acclimate” people who resolutely reject assimilation, then turn them loose on the public weal when the money runs out.

Think I’m making it up? Just google it. Taken together, they get millions and millions from the government to settle refugee groups in this country.
 
I’ll add this. If the meat supply should fail, people will go bonkers, and rightly so. Most of meat production is “just in time” all the way along the chain, and if it fails, it will fail big.
 
There is a bigger economic crash coming, with or without the shutdown, and it will make 2008 seem like nothing.

@Ridgerunner
I’ll add this. If the meat supply should fail, people will go bonkers, and rightly so. Most of meat production is “just in time” all the way along the chain, and if it fails, it will fail big.
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This is true, but it staggers me that such a critical analysis as this is just accepted blankly as “how it is.” The way we produce is insane. Farmers are dumping their produce due to “lack of demand”, and elsewhere we are working people raw to produce chicken.
 
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Is it an economic recovery ? That is the million dollar question.
None of this is clear and everybody is guessing to an extent. The politics stink.
Lives are at stake. And the worst outcome is sacrificing people and shutting back down.
The second worst is not doing what can be to start up do we keep going.
 
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Regular_Atheist said:
The way we produce is insane.
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It wasn’t before Covid, but it is now. Previously the production chain was quite rational, if skewed to the big integrated companies. We could have done better in a catastrophe with a more decentralized distribution chain.

I’ll add that local abattoirs are still operating and have plenty of meat, even though they’re a bit overbooked at present.
 
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Have they cut the price they are paying to the ranchers while increasing the price they charge their retail customers?
 
sallybutler said:
Have they cut the price they are paying to the ranchers while increasing the price they charge their retail customers?
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That’s what they say at the stockyards, and I’m inclined to believe it. Cattle prices aren’t terrible, but they’re not great. The owner of the big stockyard where I send cattle says the integrated processors are just about doubling their money. That puts a steer carcass in the stratosphere cost-wise. A “ready to butcher” steer weighing 1200-1600 lb will sell for slightly over a dollar a pound (though that’s a very high weight for a regional stockyard, a story all its own) at the stockyard. That means the integrated processor will get about double that. That’s a lot, particularly considering a steer will only yield about 60% meat, the rest going to pet food, leather goods, etc. Perhaps a year ago, the integrators were getting not much more than they were paying. When I say “integrator” I’m talking about the highly integrated companies like Tyson or JBS who operate feed lots, slaughterhouses, and sell finished brand name product to the retail stores. Tyson, for example, owns Jimmie Dean and other product names. The only fly in their ointment right now is disorder in the markets and Covid in some of the plants.

One last thing. At stockyards, ranchers rarely send fully grown steers (or slaughter heifers). They sell at lighter weights. The big companies buy them and “finish” them by feeding them grain at a giant feed lot. When they reach the weight they want, that’s when they send them to slaughter.
Sometimes there is an intermediate step where lightweight steers will go to pasture operations. Around here, those are mostly wheat fields in Kansas and Oklahoma. Wheat can be grazed until some point in the spring and it’s very nutritious.
 
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